From Apathy to Activity: An Illuminating Situation

I’m really good at some parts of adulting, but I fail miserably in other areas. I’m very good at going to work and saving money. I excel in a number of areas in business and I’m pretty good at accepting responsibility.
But I’m terrible at grocery shopping, cooking, and doing laundry. Those tedious tasks that are a necessary part of adulting are things that I meet with dread every single time.

And recently, my adulting struggle has resulted in a lighting problem.

The bathroom lights and the fan lights are fine because two of them are still operational. I have 2/3 of the illuminating power I once had but I only have one light in my closet, so my clothes and shoes are currently in complete darkness.

So, for the past month, I’ve modified my life to accommodate this recent lighting problem. More than once, I’ve gotten on the ground and felt around for my shoes because I wasn’t able to see them from the partial strength light coming from the center of my room.

But every day, when I go to get dressed, I still flip on my closet light out of habit, only to be disappointed again when the light doesn’t turn on. Though it’s a little bit of an inconvenience, I still haven’t taken the step to go and locate more bulbs from the garage. Instead, I’ve adapted to this reality: my clothes and shoes are destined to live in darkness forever.

This makes me wonder how often this happens to other areas of our lives. Something bad happens or we get put into a toxic situation or we are disappointed and we adapt to the reality around us so we can survive. It’s amazing what we can get used to when we have to. But, after a while, that mindset can easily become our new normal. Then we just expect that same bad thing to continue happening. We think that every relationship will be harmful. We think that we will never be free of whatever that issue is that plagues us.

But the truth is that we weren’t created to live in disappointment or unhealthy relationships or less than God’s best for us. But how often do we settle, just like I’ve settled with my illumination problem?

Because it’s hard.
Or uncomfortable.
Or we’ve forgotten that other options exist.

It’s no fun to dig into those hard and hurting places in our hearts and ask God to heal them. Going to someone and asking for forgiveness isn’t an enjoyable experience and uprooting bitterness definitely isn’t my idea of a good time, but these are all vital parts of our lives!

Let’s be people who examine our hearts and minds and lives regularly and allow God to illuminate those areas that are dark and heal those parts that are hurting. Let’s move past the pattern of apathy that’s so easy to fall into and let hope invade our hearts and minds.

I suspect that as we do so, we’ll see that things are much better his way than the ways we may have grown accustomed to living over the years.